A modern airport will have multiple separate systems for displaying flight information, check-in, baggage information, public safety, TSA, weather, gate information, vendor advertising, transportation, control tower and tarmac operations information. Each of these system generates their own data feed, in their own format, stored and retrieved from their own databases, updated on their own schedule, and displayed to their specific user population via dedicated displays.
It is currently not possible within existing airport systems to, from a single central control station, change the feed at a specific display, e.g. flight departures, located at a specific location such as the main terminal, to a different feed, for example public safety evacuation instructions.
It is also not currently possible at existing modern airports for a passenger to subscribe to an air travel application on his or her mobile device that provides passenger specific information, such as providing a geo-tag for his or her vehicle in order to remember a parking spot, providing the walking travel time from the parking spot to reach the gate associated with their flight, providing updated boarding times and departure times, providing information on the trend of the queue at the TSA checkpoint associated with their gate, encouraging the passenger to decide on a post-TSA checkpoint coffee versus a pre-TSA checkpoint coffee by offering a coupon (intra-airport passenger management), providing flight information, weather information, providing in-flight meal and entertainment information and carry-on options, using smartphone near-field communications to provide airport vendor coupons, and using their smartphone IP address to send accurate, real-time reminders or alerts.
Accordingly, there is strong demand for accurate, timely content by users of airports and other campus-type facilities.
There is currently no available single unified interface to achieve all or most of these functions. The prior art does not teach a centrally located computer that distributes a stream of constantly updated data to a plurality of data distribution nodes for periodic download as taught by this invention.
There is a long-felt need for airport and campus operators to be able to receive data feeds form multiple sources, scrub, code, and validate the data, and then re-distribute selected or filter information to travel operations displays and user equipment.